All the Devils' hottest news, from notes to numbers to neutral-zone traps

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Left wing Ryan Carter will be back in the Devils’ lineup tonight against the Rangers after missing the last three games with an upper body injury.

Right wing Steve Bernier also will be back in after being a healthy scratch for Thursday’s 4-3 overtime win over Minnesota.

Right wing Damien Brunner and defensemen Peter Harrold and Eric Gelinas will be the healthy scratches as the Devils go back to dressing six defensemen after playing with seven Thursday night.

The Devils are 5-1-0 when dressing seven defensemen, but that forces them to overplay some forwards and it’s understandable they don’t want to do that with the team playing its third game in four nights Sunday against Toronto.

As reasons for going with six defensemen, Devils coach Pete DeBoer listed, “The schedule, the Rangers are a four line team.

“With the fact we lost (Tim) Sestito (elbowed in the head) early last game, we really went to three lines pretty early in the game,” DeBoer said. “I think we’re going to need four lines of guys tonight for the game we’re going to have to play.”

Getting Carter back and putting Bernier back in allows DeBoer to reunite his fourth line of Carter, Stephen Gionta and Steve Bernier.

“It’s good to get Carter back,” DeBoer said. “We’re going to need that line’s energy and what they bring against these guys. They’ve got a history of playing well as a line against the Rangers and we need that tonight.”

Carter, who scored two goals in the Devils’ 3-2 win over the Rangers on Nov. 12 at Madison Square Garden, definitely wanted to play in this game, but said it just worked out that he was healthy enough. He missed the Dec. 7 game at the Garden (a 4-3 Devils’ OT win) with a sprained MCL in his right knee.

“These games are tough to miss,” he said. “They’re fun to play in. That really didn’t play a factor. It was a timing thing.”

Carter admits he enjoys these rivalry games.

“It’s a big game,” he said. “These are usually big games. In terms of rivalry and passion I haven’t been involved in one like the Devils-Rangers since probably high school. They don’t carry as much meaning, but the rivalry was intense then and it’s just easy to get up for these games.”

Bernier, who has not scored in his last 41 games, was a healthy scratch Thursday for the first time this season. DeBoer hopes that sitting out a game might help Bernier.

“Like a lot of guys who haven’t scored in a while, you carry that around and the elephant gets bigger and bigger,” DeBoer said. “So, sometimes I think you take a step back. It’s never for lack of effort with him, but, hopefully, he comes back in a little refreshed and a little looser.”

“You just take a step back and clear your head," Bernier said. "Now tonight it’s a new game and a new opportunity to help the team win and a new opportunity to show that I deserve to be in the lineup."

***Martin Brodeur will start in net for the Devils tonight against Henrik Lundqvist for the Rangers. Cory Schneider said he has been told that he will start Sunday against Toronto, but also said it’s always possible that could change. (Brodeur has not started back-to-back games this season, so it seems the odds are against that.)

DeBoer said it’s “a pretty safe comment” that Brodeur gets up for the games against the Rangers and that is among the factors that were discussed in deciding to start him tonight.

“We throw a lot of things in that mix when we’re making those decisions,” DeBoer said. “That’s definitely one of the things we talk about, but that’s not the be all and end all. I have no doubt that Cory Schneider tonight if we threw him in there would recognize the significance of the game and the rivalry and would rise to the occasion too.”

The Devils are 3-1-0 against the Rangers this season, but the one loss came in their last meeting on Jan. 26 at Yankee Stadium. The Devils led 3-1 in the first period, but fell apart after that and lost 7-3.

DeBoer said that the game was played outdoors had nothing to do with the outcome.

“That outdoor game, I don’t blame that on the environment,” DeBoer said. “I thought it was a great event. We beat ourselves that game and we can’t do that tonight. I think we know that.”

***DeBoer said he “didn’t know a lot” about the Devils-Rangers rivalry before his first season as the Devils head coach in 2011-12.

“I think (you don’t know) until you live in the community and you see how many Ranger fans and Devil fans there are walking the streets side by side (and) in the same house sometimes,” DeBoer said. “When we played each other in the playoffs two years ago, that really hit home for me when you see how passionate both sides got. So, I didn’t realize the rivalry until we lived in the community and experienced it firsthand.”

About

TOM GULITTI has covered the New Jersey Devils for The Record since 2002. Prior to that, he covered the New York Rangers for four years. Gulitti joined The Record in 1998 after six years at The North Jersey Herald News. He graduated from Binghamton University in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts in Rhetoric-Literature.